Schools have been banned from transporting learners in the night in yet another attempt by the government to tame road carnage.
The Ministry of Roads and Transport has instructed the road safety authority (NTSA), the police, schools and parents to ensure that pupils and leaners are not transported between 10pm and 5am.
Kipchumba Murkomen, the Roads and Transport Cabinet Secretary, has taken the step after he was jolted by a series of road crashes that have claimed lives of learners, starting with the accident that killed Pwani University students a few weeks ago.
On Tuesday, another six students died in a road accident just when schools were starting to release learners for end of term one break.
“Usalama barabarani ni jukumu letu sote,” Mr Murkomen summarised his five-page statement released on Wednesday in Kiswahili after a few weeks of teeth gnashing, torment, tears flowing, and blame game prompted by a possible senseless killing of young people Kenya needs for its economic growth.
He asked everyone, including Cabinet colleagues and the public, to scan the roads and report unruly crew while avoiding death-trap contraptions in form of unusable and speeding public service vehicles.
From his statement, the minister addressed everybody and cited every law, revealing that Kenyan roads were killing more than 3,000 people every year in spite of the many laws, policies, regulations and collaborations that the authorities cling to when the media turn their lenses, through agenda setting, to senselessness on the roads.
A number of reports, studies, and surveys have cited human error and wobbly vehicle inspection as the major gaps in making Kenyan roads safe. Drivers have been retrained, they have gone for medical tests, but have ended up with tame sentencing as torment continues.
Why? The roads are unmanned, but have been turned into bribe collection points where police officers who should be enforcing the law demand and pick up crumpled Sh50 notes from the scared matatu crew who claim no vehicle is spared from the collections.
The vehicles are uninspected but are released for the bribe, something that emboldens them to operate dangerously while moving people in unroadworthy vehicles.
“On the issue of transportation for school children, it is prudent to enhance safety especially now that the schools are closing and our children are traveling home,” the minister said.
Road accidents do not happen only during occasions like when schools are closed, neither do they happen only during festivities. No, during these special occasions, the madness grows in the mad rush by the matatu operators for super profits. In their wake, they leave a trail of anguish and no one seems to care.
Mr Murkomen said that all school children must be allocated seats with functional seatbelts, forgetting that a number of vehicles do not have the belts and carry passengers beyond their capacity to compensate for the bribes that police officers collect from them while wearing uniforms paid for by the taxpayer.
Seatbelts are non-existent, Mr Murkomen. Do your own survey. You had better not just talk about a life-and-death affair but demand to see action.
In his statement, the CS directed that school vans, buses, and matatus that are un-roadworthy be removed from the roads with immediate effect. The minister also directed that “approved” speed limiters be installed to record data and transmit the information to the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) and vendor servers, and report violations real-time.
Mr Murkomen said public service and commercial vehicle drivers be taken for fitness tests covering eyes and ears after every three years and all be retested starting June 1, 2023.
Well, time will tell. But a government keen on doing things differently should be ready to have sleepless nights just to ensure travel does not become a monster.
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